umlaut
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Posts posted by umlaut
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the constant switching to 3d preview mode takes a lot of time, especially for tinkering with the flavor objects. It would be great if there was a palet in 3d mode where you can click on something and see it on the map instantly. Or something like that.
I fully agree. That would be very, very useful, indeed. I´m guessing that BFC are already working on these kinds of improvements - it would also help them in their own designing of scenarios.
But anyway: I´m still extremely happy with the editor - as I remember how making maps in CM1 was. This editor is a huge improvement. (there´s of course room for even more improvement: More realisticly looking damaged buildings/ruins are on the top of my personal list)
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Backyards, details and and flavor objects coming along nicely.
But jeeez, soooooooo slowly.
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I will - as soon as it is finished.
I´m nearly done making the map itself. Then I have to add the flavor objects. So at least another week.
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I thought I´d try a new way to show the map. So here´s a little video teaser (edited very quickly in Windows Movie Maker)
(pity we can´t embed it here)
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I was under the impression that the force screens was shown based on the side you played in a battle? Issent this true? Ive been seing axis screens playing as allies on several occasions in CMFI.
I believe that at some occasions (maybe when you load a scenario the first time?) the game picks a FSB with no regard to the side you´re playing. Other than that I think it is always side specific.
If your question is aimed at my set of FSB´s in particular, the issue might be that some of the photos could be used for both sides. For instance there is a group of fallschirmjäger captured by CW troops at Cassino. Most of the men are germans, but I have the photo in the allied set as they are in "allied custody". Likewise with a knocked out pz IV, etc.
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By the way: The map is not forgotten but still under (slow) construction . The last details are just a tad more time consuming than I had forseen. And then I got a bit distracted by a thing called Gustav Line, too.
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Wow, did you have to do a lot of work on your map to get this. From memory I recognized it right away. Do you have a link to the original?
Looking on my HD now...
A couple of hours, I guess. Just thought it would be fun to see if I could recreate this alley in the map. A bit hard, though, as there are no flavor objects that resemble currogated iron roofs or the pipes/cables on the buildings. When I release the map we can then have a wee game of "find the alley"
Haven´t got a link on the web, but on my PC the location is: documents and settings/battlefront/data/Normandy v100B.brz (explode this one) /user interface/force-specific backgrounds. And then it is "force-specific background blue 6"
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Hi
I assume you mean Beyond Overlord. Right?
Well, the game mechanics don´t allow a direct conversion of a scenario from CMBO to CMBN like we could for instance from CMBB to CMAK via the Map Converter.
You´d have to rebuild the scenario from scratch. And even if you do so, I don´t think you would end up with a similar scenario, as so many things have changed "under the hood" in the game.
I am pretty sure that some of the CMBO scenarios have been remade for CMBN, though. I can´t tell you which, as I´ve never played CMBO myself.
Mojn
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Great work once again, Aris. Thank you.
BTW, I had a peek into the vehicle folders myself yesterday as I thought I might be able to use your SPW 251 mods from CMBN in CMFI if I renamed some files.Turned out the BMPs are completely different now.
And jeez, there are a lot of files now! And that of course means tons of modding work. Please let me know, if I can be of some assistance - or you want to delegate some of the work.
Mojn
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Had to try this one:
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Unfortunately, they can sometimes be very uncool too:
In a recent campaign scenario, the oppo had an armored car that could fire at my forces with almost impunity from an ambush position in some woods- inside my exit zone.
The most logical thing to do was to send tanks into the woods and attack it from several directions. But when they entered the exit zone - they, well,... exited. If I remember correctly, we had an option not to exit when entering an exit zone in CM1. That would have been handy here.
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Hi Martyr.
I´m pretty sure the short answer to both is no
Because a list would have to be revised almost daily, everytime Aris releases new mods
And because a bundle would be absolutely huge - to huge to download in one bite. And the bundle would also have to be updated daily - just like the list.
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Whiterider: I have today contacted Fizou who made the v2 set - and he has kindly sent me all the photos he used for his set of backgrounds. I´ll begin making an additional set containing his pics one of the coming days.
Childress: Thanks. Yes, I think BFC would have been forced to pay a small fortune for the right to use these pics - as that would be commercial use.
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Hi Whiterider
No, I hadn´t noticed that one. But I can see that a lot of the pics are the same
If you want to use both sets of backgrounds together you´ll have to do some renumbering - as some of the files will have the same numbers now.
The numbers of the files have to be sequential, so you could for instance take the pics you want from the v2-file and give them higher numbers than the highest number in my mod. Now 164 is the highest number for Blue, so they should be named 165, 166 and so on. The highest number for for Red is 169.
Cheers
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Yes, you should put them in your z-folder.
@Whiterider: I´m not sure what you mean? I don´t know of any "Force specific backgrounds v2".
You just place the two .brz-files in your z-folder.
Cheers
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SPQR
(Sono pazzi questi Romani)
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Ooops! I have to correct myself:
When you install this mod, you will have 333 backgrounds in the game. But there were 19 backgrounds to begin with, so my new ones are "only" 314 of them.
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Finally. My force specific backgrounds for CMFI are finished - and uploaded to GreenAsJade´s site (too large for the repository)
Axis (red): http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4904/details
Allied (blue): http://cmmods.greenasjade.net/mods/4905/details
The Blue set include 153 backgrounds for the allied side (344 MB) and the Red set have 161 backgrounds for the axis side (362 MB). But then there should also be a decent chance that you will still discover new photos while loading the game in a month or two.
As mentioned earlier I have emphazised quantity over quality here as I believe one of the most important qualities of a force specific bakcground is that it is new.
The vast majority of the photos are from Italy, but - rather ironically - it has been extremely hard to find any good photos of italian forces in Italy. Thus, I have been forced to use a few pics of italian troops from Albania and North Africa.
You will notice that I have added captions to some photos, while I haven´t to others. My criteria for adding captions are these: They must add some hard info that isn´t immidiately obvious from looking at the pictures - usually about who, where, when and so on. An example: The caption "Sherman tank on beach" won´t be included, as you can see that by looking at the photo. On the other hand I have used a caption like "A Sherman tank of 23rd Armoured Brigade coming ashore from a landing craft at Anzio, 22 January 1944", as it tells you exactly who, where and when. In many cases - especially regarding the german photos - there is little info except that the photo is taken in Italy during the war. In these cases I have omitted captions.
Enjoy
Here are a few examples:
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At last the secret behind Aris´ incredible productivity is revealed
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Some of you might wonder what happended to the Force Specific Backgrounds I promised to make for Gustav Line.
The project hasn´t been cancelled or forgotten. It is just progressing at a bit slower rate than anticipated.
As mentioned earlier elsewhere I have emphazised quantity over quality here as I believe one of the most important qualities of a force specific bakcground is that it is new.
At the moment I estimate that there is going to be around 150 pics for each side in the FSB. I expect to release them to GreenAsJade´s site (they are too large for the repository) within the next two weeks.
Here are a few of my own favorites:
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Hi there. As a service for those two or three forumites whose danish might have become a bit rusty, I have made a hasty translation of the words:
The original is here:
http://www.eurogamer.dk/articles/2013-05-27-combat-mission-gustav-line-anmeldelse
Combat Mission: Gustav Line - Review
Don´t think you´ll be allowed to relax in Combat Mission. That is how it has always been. This is not a game where you draw a few lines on a map and lean back to watch how things unfold. Combat Mission is hard, mouse damage-inducing, tough work that will punish the gamer mercilessly if he is caught unawares.
That is the strenght of the game, but might also make some people shy away from it, if their temparement isn´t for micromanaging whole batallions. But there is no other way around. If you want the realism and the real historical thing - and that is what you get in Combat Mission - it is necessary that the gamer is present all the way.
What´s new in the Gustav Line module - that requires that you own the previous Italy mod - is a lot of new units and vehicles that will make it possible to recreate the battles around Monte Cassino, Salerno and Anzio. The germans have recieved the legedary Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers, for the uninitiated) and the allies get englishmen, poles and kiwis. On the equipment side there are tanks, Brummbär, Nashorn, Elefant, Wolverine, Sexton and Priest (familiar names to all us Squad Leader relics).
Since the latest module the graphics engine has recieved a bit of attention even though there hasn´t been any actual revolutions. But it has become faster and that is a relief. There is also a new shader called "war". When you activate it the scene becomes blurred, almost black-and-white and the color composition resembles movies about WWII. As a gimmick for screen shots and movies this is bound to become popular. There is also a new popup menu that appears when you press the space bar and that deserves special praise. It is lightning quick and super easy to control with the mouse.
The shadows have been optimized, but they are still a gigantic drain on the ressources that cost up to 20 FPS in an ordinary medium size scenario on the test computer. That is not good enough. To make things even worse it seems like the game actually looks better without shadows (I am not sure what the writer means here, but I think he might have misinterpreted the term "shaders" and is speaking of "shadows" when he means "shaders". Umlaut). The shadows are serrated and when you move the camera you get the impression that they have been sticked upon the world and arent an integrated part of it, because the show up with a tiny delay. We are talking small details here but CM invites this because of the gradual - some will say slow - development of the game.
Since the last patch MG´s have become much more dangerous. They shoot at a higher rate and can surpress a larger area. This adjustment changes the dynamics of the game completely. It has become harder, as tactical errors are punished much harder. A group of soldiers that ventures into a field where a hidden MG suddenly opens up will be decimated in no time. As the MG has become deadlier area fire has also become more efficient. This leads to the side effect that the work load - which is already pretty heavy in CM - has been turned up a notch as you now have to control area fire more zealously than earlier. Without laying area fire on suspected enemy positions it is suicide to send troops out into the open.
Combat Mission Gustav Line is still good old Combat Mission and is - as usual - accompanied by deep satisfaction, a feeling that says: "this thing works goddam well". Combat Mission is the gold standard in tactical simulators, let there be no doubt about that. The series is constantly being expanded by new modules - the next one will apparently be Operation Market Garden - and they are always of high quality and of great interest to "grognards".
The series weakness - if you´ll accept it as a weakness at all - is that it year by year loses pathos. It was on exactly this parameter Combat Mission swept all other competition aside when it was released in 1999. Never before had wargamers been able to watch war at such close quarters. But as years have gone by the drama of war have kind of sanded a bit over. If you want to analyze the reasons for this feeling, the causes are probably a combination of several things. Objectively, the game has never been prettier graphically, but time doesn´t stand still and in recent years competitors have appeared that are doing better on this parameter. Graphics aren´t essential, though. There is also the way campaigns are presented in the game. They are played out as a series of scenarios with no other connection than the forces you are playing with. This could provide the coveted sense of drama, that you would be able to follow your men though thick and thin. But also here the game gets in the way: Normally you are not told which units are core units and which are lended to you, and even though there are good reasons for this, the net result is that you feel less immersion because you don´t get to know your troops.
Battlefront has a strong reluctance towards making campaigns that are more dynamic. Despite the fact that one of the most popular features of the old Combat Mission was the ability to fight a series of battles on the same map over a period of days or hours. That is the stuff that creates story telling in the gamer´s mind, drama - pathos in other words. But Battlefront has through the years argued that the concept was unrealistic and suffering from errors, and they replaced it with the current system. I think this is characteristic for the game design. The design gets more and more technical, more realistic, more engineer-ish and thus - perhaps - a little more soulless.
The is stille drama in Combat Mission. Hand grenades are thrown between small groups of men fighting bitterly in a forrest. You can follow the last survivor in a group draw his revolver against superior opposition and - after seeing him shoot four enemies a close range against all odds - finally watch him succumb from a bullet in the back. But if you play real time - and the game invites doing this - you will easily miss the many fine details like this in Combat Mission.
Rating: 9 out of 10
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Note on the translation: This is a very hasty translation - but it should definitely be better than anything Google translate could come up with. If there are unclear passages it could be my mistake as a translator, but more likely the lack of clarity is in the original. There are passages in the text I simply don´t understand. That makes it rather hard to translate them, as I had to guess what the writer´s intentions were.
Cheers
Umlaut
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Hi Aris
The Loyds are looking beatiful - but that is hardly surprising, knowing your other work. I haven´t looked at the new structure of the BMP´s in detail yet - but it seems like there´s a lot of new work compared to before GL.
if you find any problems, just post them here and I will make updates as necessaryI may have found one with the pz IVH early - but maybe it is just a fault among my own mod files?
Looking forward to your new mods
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Turn rarity off.
Damn! How did I miss that button? Thanks a lot.
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Will the cows be having bells?
Of course - and whistles
CMFI + Gustav Alternate Silhouettes v2 uploaded
in CM Fortress Italy Maps and Mods
Posted
Looks absolutely great (as always), MB. My big headache now will be choosing which one these beauts to use.
Thanks a lot